Freshly released correspondence, published Tuesday by the National Iranian American Council, reveals that American immigration authorities worked hand-in-glove with Tehran to send over one hundred Iranian nationals back to their country across three separate flights spanning late 2025 into early 2026. The documents, which NIAC obtained and chose to publicize, peel back the curtain on a surprisingly active operational channel between the two capitals, even as their public rhetoric remained deeply adversarial.
What stands out in the email chain is the degree of sway Iranian diplomats held over the selection process. American officials repeatedly adjusted their rosters at the behest of the Iranian Embassy, sometimes at the very last minute. One message from an ICE officer in August 2025 noted that additional names were tacked on following a direct request from the embassy, and referenced sitting down with an embassy director to tweak the list. Another communication mentioned Tehran's explicit ask to revise the manifest and speed things up. Even seventy-two hours before the first plane was wheels-up, the embassy was still pushing for more names, though some of those eleventh-hour asks were ultimately nixed on departure day.
This back-and-forth wasn't happening in a vacuum. It occurred even while ICE staffers privately acknowledged that many Iranians were trying to get out of the country during the brief but intense June 2025 conflict with the U.S. and Israel. Just days after a social media post from President Trump telling people to leave Tehran, the acting ICE director at the time, Todd Lyons, flagged the repatriation effort as a top concern in a note to Marcos Charles, who oversaw removals. Charles then pushed his team to get moving on deporting 58 individuals who already had final orders, demanding a plan of action immediately. A colleague echoed that urgency, calling it a "White House priority" that needed a workable solution.
The paperwork also exposes a significant lapse in oversight. At least one individual who ended up on a flight wasn't supposed to be there at all. An American official flagged the discrepancy, noting that a person not listed on the manifest provided to Qatari authorities somehow got boarded anyway. A colleague's response was one of bewilderment, saying they had no clue how that individual slipped through.
These flights took off months after a ceasefire halted the exchange of strikes between the U.S., Israel, and Iran. The very existence of this coordination, the emails suggest, flies in the face of Washington's long-standing posture of offering refuge to Iranian dissidents and exiles, a policy that has been in place since the 1979 revolution.
Advocates for human rights have raised alarms, pointing to Iran's well-documented abuses against women, religious minorities, and political opponents. For their part, Iranian authorities confirmed in September 2025 that up to 400 people might be sent back under a deal with the Trump administration, with most having entered the U.S. via the southern border.
The records don't spell out exactly how often direct lines of communication were open between the two governments. Some of the back-and-forth was routed through Qatari intermediaries, who helped arrange the charter flights out of Doha. Other messages, however, point to face-to-face meetings with an "Iranian delegation" and embassy staff.
What remains murky is whether those sent back went willingly. Prior reporting from The New York Times has indicated that asylum-seekers were among those deported, with several claiming they were forced onto the planes against their wishes.
Jamal Abdi, who leads NIAC, argued that these emails contradict the administration's stated rationale for its hardline stance toward Iran. He said the documents show the real objective was simply maximizing the number of deportations, no matter the cost. Ryan Costello, NIAC's policy director, characterized the disclosures as revealing an operation that warrants scrutiny from the top tiers of the U.S. government.
Additionally, the emails show ICE personnel setting up meetings between Iranian officials and detained individuals, a detail that mirrors claims made by asylum-seekers in a separate legal action brought by an independent Iranian advocacy group.